Dragon Dance Page 23

  “Is something the matter?” asked Kyo-san. “You’ve gone as red as a tomato.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “You need to be sensible, Martine. Too much stress can be harmful, particularly for a woman your age. You’ve got to take care of yourself, make sure your hormonal balance doesn’t get upset.”

  “Hormonal balance?”

  “It can happen,” said Kyo-san grimly. “I had a friend who wasn’t much older than you. She was working like a dog, day and night, trying to support her lousy husband.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then nothing. She woke up in the morning one day, and it was all over. She knew it straightaway.”

  Martine nodded. She didn’t need to ask the identity of the “friend.”

  “By the way,” said Kyo-san. “There was a call just before you came in, some guy with an Irish name.”

  “You mean James Murphy, the new bureau chief?”

  [169] “Is he? Well, he didn’t introduce himself, in fact he wasn’t at all polite. He just said you need to check your mail receiver, and no mistakes this time.”

  Martine’s eyes flicked back to the screen and the grotesque “No to Nozawa” editorial. Now she understood what had happened. It was Murphy in Washington who had written the editorial. It was Murphy who had removed her byline from the interview. As promised, he was “refocusing the Tribune’s coverage,” providing the readership with “a strong and clear message about Japan.” The fact that the message was ill-written, ill-informed, and absurdly wrongheaded was beside the point. At least it was strong and clear.

  Martine opened the mail folder. As expected, there was a message from Murphy, received just half an hour ago.

  Ms. Meyer,

  It appears you ignored my instruction to send me all your stories for prior review. Fortunately I managed to catch this one just in time and exploit its potential. I warn you that as bureau chief I have full authority over all personnel matters in Tokyo. If you disobey an instruction again, the consequences will be severe.

  Regards,

  J. J. Murphy

  Kyo-san’s voice sounded from the other side of the room. “What’s the matter, honey? You look terrible.”

  “Quite possible,” answered Martine darkly. If history had taught her one thing, it was that the only sensible policy toward guys like James Murphy was uncompromising defiance.

  She deleted his message and on impulse dashed off a couple of lines to Makoto.

  Get back here, you silly man. I miss you terribly. I miss your touch and your taste.

  She sent it off straightaway, deliberately giving herself no time to change her mind.

  The press conference had been called for three o’clock in the afternoon, which would give the evening talk shows enough time to rewrite their scripts and get hold of the right kind of commentators. The venue was unusual for a major political event—not a hotel or lecture hall, but the Tokyo Dome. The press and TV people—from giggling female newscasters in microminis to [170] silver-haired political editors—had to shove their way through the crush of Nozawa fans waiting for the evening concert. Many had been waiting since the morning, and some had brought sleeping bags and spent the night there. The word had gone out that something special was going to happen. There was a buzz of excitement amongst the press people too. the invitation had come at short notice, and nobody was sure what to expect.

  Martine knew, though. It was the launch of the new political party, with Nozawa as the figurehead, graduates of the Morikawa leadership school supplying the organization, and grassroots support coming from every Japanese citizen who had ever hummed a Nozawa song. The “National Regeneration” tour was kicking off with five successive nights at the Tokyo Dome. As Nozawa had explained at the first interview, it was the optimum time for the official announcement.

  The last time Martine had been inside the Dome was to cover the mass wedding of ten thousand couples who had never even met before their nuptials. That had been a strange event, but this was even stranger. In this huge artificial space, where the grass was always green though the rain never fell, where foreign rock groups had cavorted and baseball players had smashed home runs—here, for better or worse, a new chapter in Japanese history was about to open. This was a country that had played safe for so long, clinging to the status quo like a toddler to a blanket. Now it was getting ready to play risky. You didn’t have to be of Kyo-san’s generation to feel nervous about the consequences.

  Martine made her way to the enclosure that had been prepared next to the main stage. Nozawa and his staff were already seated at a long trestle table equipped with microphones, bowls of fruit, and bouquets of red roses. Nobody was saying anything, but already the air was full of the flicker of strobes and the fizzing of camera shutters. Martine reckoned there were about three hundred media people present, including several dozen camera crews, who had elbowed their way to the front. Apart from the mainstream media, there were TV comedians, literary critics, music journalists, online data suppliers already tapping away at their tiny keyboards, correspondents from Business Week, the BBC, and Le Globe, France’s most prestigious daily. It was an impressive turnout, testament to the fact that Nozawa was the biggest news in the Japanese political world for years.

  Nozawa sat silently gazing into space. On his right was Shimizu, and on his left Yamazaki, who was just back from a digital son-et-lumière show in Venice. Martine recognized several of the others, including Professor Suzuki of Tokyo University and Yasutani, the manga writer with an uncanny knack for making sensational archaeological finds. She wondered how many of them had connections with the Morikawa school. According to Kyo-san’s research, Suzuki had been a part-time lecturer there almost a quarter of a century [171] ago, just before he got the professorship. As for Yasutani, both the producer of his TV show and the chief editor at his publishers were Morikawa graduates.

  Shimizu stood up and called for silence. He spoke with the slick plausibility that was the defining characteristic of every management consultant Martine had ever met.

  “Welcome everybody. It is a great honor to see all the most famous and important faces in the media world gathered here before us. The reason we have invited you is simple. We want you to celebrate a birth. The birth of a new political party, the birth of the new Japan.”

  That cued in the opening chords of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” overlaid with the squelchy trance-dub beat that Yamazaki had made famous. The black curtain at the back of the platform parted, revealing a long line of men in dark suits. They formed a row at the back of the stage and made a deep, perfectly synchronized bow. There was a murmur of surprise from the assembled journalists as they recognized so many of Japan’s prominent young politicians together in one place. Conservatives and reformers, representatives of rural areas and depressed industrial suburbs, spokesmen for the Buddhists and the environmentalists and the trade unions and the bankers and the software industry—all standing in line, committing themselves to Nozawa.

  Above them hung a giant video screen bearing the image of Nozawa dressed up as Ryoma Sakamoto, the samurai hero who inspired the Meiji Restoration and got assassinated for his pains. Nozawa/Sakomoto was holding a gleaming sword; strands of disorderly hair fell over his face; and his cherry-red lips were pursed in an expression of furious concentration. Underneath, written in blood-red characters, was the phrase “National Regeneration Party.” Of course, thought Martine. What else would you call it?

  Now it was the turn of the real Nozawa. He stood there smiling, microphone in hand, apparently surveying the audience one by one. When he spoke, it was in the husky half-whisper that had his young female fans squealing.

  “Before I explain what we’re going to do, let me explain why we need to do it. Let me take you back many decades, to a small fishing village looking out over the sparkling ocean, a young woman bending down in a rice field, a four-month-old baby on her back ...”

  Martine knew the story. She had read the manga,
seen the movie, heard similar words sung over a lush orchestral backing, a pulsing reggae beat, and the thundering chords of thrash-metal. The baby was Nozawa. The village was his paradise of lost innocence and tranquillity, where human beings lived in harmony with each other and with nature, where the women were pure and beautiful and willing to wait forever, and the men were honest and strong and were sincerely sorry about breaking the women’s hearts and moped about it ever after in big-city karaoke bars. Martine was sure that no such village [172] had ever existed. It was beyond nostalgia, it was myth, and like all myth it felt more real than your own life. The boy standing on the beach, waiting for his father’s boat to return, the cranes flying north under a silver moon, the stationmaster saluting the last train that would ever leave the station, a single tear glistening in the corner of his eye—these images were imprinted on the nation’s consciousness in songs like “Mama’s Miso Soup,” “Where have all the fireflies gone?” and “This land is the land of the gods.”

  While Nozawa talked, Martine checked through the press pack that each journalist received at the entrance. It contained the three most recent CDs, each personally autographed on the cover, the new videogame, and a glossy brochure explaining “The Road to National Regeneration.” This was a slick summary of Nozawa’s pet themes—cultural pride, moral education, patriotic investment, industrial recovery, and so on. In each case there was a quotation from a Nozawa song, a glossy photo of a happy family engaging in a Nozawa-approved activity, and then a few paragraphs sketching out the new policies. “Agricultural Restoration” was a theme that Martine hadn’t come across before. First came the quotation:

  Every grain of rice is a treasure

  Every grain of rice contains our ancestors’ sweat

  Every grain of rice contains Japan

  Then underneath was a picture of a smiling mother teaching her daughter to make riceballs. The policy itself was typically radical and typically vague. Apparently, unused rice paddies were to be bought up by the government and distributed free to unemployed workers, who would then receive agricultural subsidies instead of social security payments. There were no targets, no numbers, no details at all.

  Martine flicked through the brochure until she came to the page explaining the membership and structure of the National Regeneration Party. It was as she expected, with Nozawa as party leader and Morikawa graduates filling out the three key party positions of secretary general, chairman of the policy affairs council, and deputy leader. She was surprised to note that Shimizu had been appointed deputy leader of the party. That was strange since he was not even a Diet member.

  On stage, Nozawa was moving into the most emotional part of his speech—his vision of the future. This too was familiar stuff. The nation was to be united like a huge family, everyone working together harmoniously, no more strife and greed, no more wasteful consumption, society as perfect and pure as described in his idealistic megabit ballad, “Remember.”

  When he had finished there was a moment of silence, then rapturous [173] applause from the audience. Silver-haired editors, sexy young newscasters, pony-tailed cameramen, all were visibly moved. One thing was obvious straightaway—the National Regeneration Party was going to get a soft ride from the mass media.

  Next it was time for the Diet member’s lined up behind Nozawa to have their moment in the spotlight. Each man stepped forward as Shimizu called his name, bowed, and muttered a few bland slogans—“I’ll give my all for the future of Japan,” “Let’s build a better tomorrow,” “The Japanese dream, one more time!” If the idea was not to upstage Nozawa, it worked superbly. They sounded sincere, pleasant, and deeply dull. Martine wondered how long it would take for the “Agricultural Restoration” and Nozawa’s other pet schemes to be sidelined in favor of the Morikawa school’s real agenda.

  Only fifteen minutes were left for questions. The Tribune interview had hit the streets just a few hours before, but it was already the talk of the town. Inevitably, the first questions focused on the nuclear weapons issue, and just as inevitably Nozawa batted them away with clichés about “keeping all options open,” and “responding flexibly to dynamic changes in the international environment.” He had broken the taboo—for the moment that was enough. The questions moved on to the restoration of lifetime employment, the tax subsidies for filial piety, and the plan for a new military college.

  Martine waited right until the end before standing up to ask her question. She was aware of every other journalist in the room scrutinizing her, probably wondering what she had got up to with Shimizu in order to earn the scoop.

  “Shimizu-san, I see that you are taking up the position of deputy leader of the new party. First, let me offer my congratulations.”

  “Thank you very much, Meyer-san. And congratulations to you on your excellent work in today’s Tribune.”

  They had already spoken about this. Surprisingly, Shimizu hadn’t been at all upset by the hostile editorial.

  “Please forgive my ignorance,” continued Martine, “but how can a non-politician take on the role of deputy leader?”

  “No problem,” was Shimizu’s suave answer. “The deputy leader has no specific area of responsibility. It’s largely a ceremonial role.”

  “But how can you have even a ceremonial role if you’re not a member of the Diet?”

  “Ah, but I will be a member very soon. One of the gentlemen behind me has decided to retire for health reasons, and he has asked me to take over his constituency. The by-election will be held next month.”

  Martine made a bow of acknowledgment and sat down again. “Health reasons” indeed! It was a blatant fix, a way for Shimizu to surf to power in the shortest possible time. Once in the Diet he could keep a close watch on the [174] party “leader,” making sure he followed the Morikawa line at all times. And when the first Nozawa administration was formed, he could slot quite easily into a junior post—minister of culture, perhaps, or chief of the environment agency. Martine realized just how much she had been underestimating Shimizu. He wasn’t just a mouthpiece for other people’s ideas. He was the lynch-pin of the whole project.

  The press conference ended with a saké toast to the future of the new party, and everyone in the audience raised the little cup—emblazoned with “National Regeneration” on one side and “nZw” on the other—and shouted “Kampai!” Tickets for the evening concert had been handed around, but Martine decided not to stay.

  Outside she met the correspondent of Le Globe, and they walked to the station together. During the ninety minutes of the press conference, the number of Nozawa fans waiting outside seemed to have doubled. Among them were dozens of look-alikes in headbands and construction-worker trousers, playing guitars, banging taiko drums, flying digital kites that dipped and swerved overhead, blaring out Nozawa songs and flashing images of his face.

  “I was fascinated by your editorial,” said Alain Lemaitre in his sternly courteous French. “Might I be forgiven for viewing it as a departure in certain ways from your established approach?”

  Lemaitre was a dapper, handsome graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure with a well-developed taste for Japanese porcelain, noh theatre, and teenage boys. His dispatches from Tokyo were fact-free zones, tending instead to reflect at length on such topics as “Cultural self-definition in a hyper-capitalist social context.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” said Martine. “We have a new bureau chief who has some rather simple ideas.”

  “Ideas? I’m not sure I would call them ideas. Anyway, my own articles have taken a different line. I believe that Nozawa symbolizes the ascendancy of the cultural sphere over the economic sphere and the inevitable decay of the unipolar ultraliberal world view.”

  “You mean he annoys the Americans.”

  “Exactly. And this of course is to be celebrated. Even the problem of nuclear weapons that your editor makes such a fuss over—in my view, a Japanese force de frappe is not to be blindly opposed. The desire to defend one’s cultural auto
nomy is rational and necessary. De Gaulle thought exactly the same way.”

  “It’s going to create instability.”

  “Instability is something we must learn to embrace. It is an inevitable side effect of our evolution to a multipolar structure of values.”

  “As in Romania, I suppose.”

  Martine couldn’t resist the jibe. Today’s Tribune had carried [175] stomach-churning reports of a new massacre, carried out by one of the rebel groups that the European forces had been sent to protect.

  Lemaitre shrugged. “Romania is a messy business, but at least Europe is finally acting as an independent cultural entity. In historical terms this is a healthy development.”

  Martine raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Only a French intellectual would be capable of describing a bloodbath as a healthy historical development.

  “Getting back to Nozawa—are you really as enthusiastic as you sound?”

  “Yes, indeed. Nozawa’ will be an important figure in Asia, and a natural ally of European interests. We must cultivate him carefully. Now that his party has been launched, he will be officially invited to Paris and Brussels in the near future. Also there is a high probability that the Académie Française will make him a chevalier d’ordre des lettres.”

  “Don’t you have to be a writer for that?”

  Lemaitre frowned at her ignorance. “Not at all. Several foreign musicians and film directors have been made chevaliers. The honor is open to any artist willing to stand up for the values of cultural autonomy.”

  “I see. And who arranged the nomination?”

  “I did,” said Lemaitre, allowing himself a tiny sphinxlike smile.

  They walked past a darkened Starjacks outlet that had been closed down pending investigation and crossed the street. The area around the station was seething with fans and ticket touts calling out prices. Martine was amazed to hear that the going rate for a ticket was more than a week’s wages for an average worker. Shimizu’s publicity offensive had been superbly effective.